February 13th 2016

Tonight is so far the coldest night of the winter: -14 F as I write this. It’s also a beautifully clear night. I wear my heaviest winter coat, good to 60 below, pull the hood over my head, already wearing a wool cap, and go outside.·

bitter····cold—stars crackling in the wandering········trees·

When it becomes this cold, the trees, birches, maples and ash, pop and whine like the hulls of wooden boats. The iron and wooden bridge crossing the brook behind my house pops like a fire cracker. And the snow squeaks underfoot.

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who····lives there? — looking into my own········house

·

Returning home, the light from inside looks especially warm. There’s steam on the kitchen windows and my own books are on the shelves. My own life, for a little while, is being lived there.

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It’s minus ten here in Brooklin, ME at 7:24 AM and my winter birds three feet from my eyes and 85 degrees distant in temperature (don’t you just love the woodstove?) are putting on a comedy show for me. They’re looking pretty silly all puffed up against the cold, but the most amusing are the junkos who this winter have learned how to use the wire-cage feeders (normally they’re on the ground and snow surface scuffing their tidbits to view). One puffed up fatty has been sitting on the pieplate rim of the feeder, staring at the sunflower seed in the column before him. Quite clearly not wanting to mess with the lighter-colored husks immediately in front of him (left by the mice who gnawed their way into the forty-pound bag earlier this winter), he can see the darker hulls just above but when he stretches his little neck up to reach them his puffed feathers open, and gap, and he scrunches back down to the warmer puffball posture, self censoring his quest for food, in favor of greater comfort against the cold. The insecurity of the junkos on the mesh feeders (their nervousness over their claw grips means half the time they’re fluttering their wings) is apparent but they’ve found out about suet by the tiny pieces that fall from the suet cage immediately above the top cover of one of the sunflower seed feeders, and figuring out that the crumbs come from the cage above them, I’ve actually seem them on the top edge of the cage pecking down at the suet beneath their feet. They leave for the downies twice their size, however, and fairly flee from the four-times-larger hairies.

I want the many readers who visit from other parts of the world to know that you're welcome in my home. We in the United States, as in any other country, aren't always represented by who governs us. It doesn't matter to me where you're from, what language you speak or what truth you believe in. What matters to me is what's in your heart—and my own heart is what I offer you.

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Patrick Gillespie has self-published one book of Poetry and edited nothing besides. His poetry and criticism has been firmly ignored and hasn't been translated into a single language. Gillespie has never been a Poet Laureate (let alone a Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere), a Literary Fellow of the National Endowment of the Arts, or a Fellow of the Vermont Arts Council. He has received no prizes from the Poetry Foundation (or any other poetry related organizations) and the devil reportedly worries that Hell will freeze over if he ever receives anything like a Genius Grant from the MacArthur Fellows Program. He has been firmly rejected by any and all publishers. No plaques have been or will be dedicated to him or his poetry. Gillespie has received no recognition or prizes of any kind. He holds zero academic credentials or titles. In short, Gillespie is just like you -- of little to no importance to all but a few. You have no reason whatsoever to read him. He wears bottle-cap glasses, works as a Carpenter, has three daughters and a good sense of humor. He is currently replacing all the bad windows in his Vermont home.